Watch the Perseids Meteor Shower in August when the night weather is warm

People have far more in common than any differences we may perceive (real or imagined). My community service educational work supports that understanding by not discriminating against anyone on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity, race, color, language, handicaps, socioeconomic situation, housing status, genetics, gender, sexual orientation, age, appearance, religion, marital status, physical and mental health, veteran classification, intelligence, politics, or anything else; all persons are accepted as fellow human beings, and I support (and model) the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enabling equal access to excellence in education. http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Space Rocks workshops are free to public schools and public libraries; no academic, government, business, religious, political, or private funding is accepted; instead, please consider helping hungry and homeless peopleby supporting the Amos House soup kitchen and shelters in Rhode Island www.AmosHouse.com

A ROCK TOUR WITH REAL ROCKS

WORKSHOPS

We're lucky to live on the planet Earth orbiting at a distance from our star (the Sun) in the so-called 'Goldilocks Zone': not too hot, not too cold; just right.

Pieces of planets and other solid surface bodies in our solar system often older than the oldest Earth rocks (over 4 billion years old) are brought into schools and public libraries so that students can hold in their hands, for 'up-close and personal' examination, specimens of: our Moon, the planet Mars, a comet nucleus, asteroids, and some tiny chondrules (the first solid matter to accrete from the Sun's primordial solar nebula of gas and dust). One meteorite even contains interstellar grains (stardust) blasted into space by the supernova explosion of another star (in our galaxy) that lived and died far away and long ago before the Sun formed. Impact iridium sediment, from an asteroid hitting the Earth 65 million years ago, and Triceratops fossils (among the last dinosaur species at the time of that massive extinction), are included.

Inquiry science (especially meteoritics), always a work in progress because it involves so many interrelated researchable variables, requires continual updating to include the newest knowledge and to refine meaningful questions; this project is no exception, therefore, informed discussion of all thinking from every perspective is respected so together we can consider what we know, as well as what we don't know, and learn from both.

RESOURCES

THE BEST-PRESERVED MAJOR METEORITE IMPACT CRATER ON EARTH

These are two of my photographs at "Meteor Crater" near Winslow, Arizona. The aerial shot was taken looking through the cockpit glass of our plane circling low and slow above the crater with commercial and United States Air Force Vietnam Veteran pilot, Capt. Jim Cook, DFC. I was glad that my friend in the left seat has over twenty-thousand flying hours, because strong thermals rising off the high desert below us caused our aircraft to buck up and down hundreds of feet demanding a lot of challenging hands-on piloting. We continued studying the area's dynamic geology by cruising next over nearby extinct volcano craters (for comparison), landing on a small air strip in Marble Canyon, and then following the eventual drainage of Canyon Diablo into the Colorado River and subsequently the Grand Canyon where we flew across that spectacular erosion.

IDENTIFYING A "METEOR CRATER" METEORITE IN YOUR HANDS

The scan above shows 17 rare, fragile meteoritic specimens (cut small) in clear individual boxes so that they can be displayed inside one Riker Mount for examination with a laboratory magnifying glass. These fragments, along with the two larger rocks and dinosaur fossils, remain on SpaceRocksWithDrLen.com educational tour throughout the year; perhaps coming soon to a school or library near you: descriptions of the specimens that students ask about most often are highlighted in blue.

METEORITIC SPECIMENS RECOVERED FROM EACH OF THE 7 CONTINENTS ON EARTHIN ONE DISPLAY SO YOU CAN HOLD THEM ALL TOGETHER FOR CAREFUL COMPARISON

(Top row, left to right): Peekskill, USA: stone meteorite that crashed right through a teenager's parked car while she was in the house watching television; Bjurbole, Finland: stone meteorite chondrules, our solar system's oldest solid matter (average diameter 1 millimeter), accreted from the immense cloud of gas and dust which surrounded the newly-shining Sun and from which the planets formed; Abee, Canada: stone meteorite that research indicates may have formed within the oxygen-starved orbit of the planet Mercury; Allende, Mexico: stone meteorite containing interstellar grains (stardust)from the explosion of another star before our Sun was formed; Murchison, Australia: stone that tests as being from a cometnucleus, predates our solar system and has remained virtually unchanged since, contains elements that formed in different types of other stars, in addition also contains some kinds of amino acids not found on Earth.

(Bottom row, left to right): Imilac, Chile, stony-iron meteorite found in the Atacama desert (easy to see on the dry ground); Moldavite, Czechoslovakia: tektite Earth impact glassy material blasted up into space; Canyon Diablo, USA: Earth rock flour pulverized by meteorite impact; Siberia, Russia: molten metal raindrop from the Tunguska Event explosion high up in the air; Siberia, Russia: tree bark off one of the millions of Siberian Spruce trees knocked down by the Tunguska Event.

MORE SPACE ROCKS ARE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

42 more specimens (not touring area schools), in the Space Rocks study collection of 60, are at the NASA Northeast Regional Planetary Data Center on the second floor of Lincoln Field Building, main campus, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. SpaceRocksWithDrLen.com donations to the university also include a piece of alloy from a space-flown Soviet Soyuz cosmonaut spacecraft; fragment of the first U.S. space station, Skylab; tomato seeds exposed to nearly six years of space radiation in NASA's LDEF satellite; polystyrene spheres manufactured by astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Challenger; and a Triceratops bone fossil (one of the last dinosaur species at the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction). NASA resources to study the entire solar system are maintained here for educators and students. http://www.geo.brown.edu/BrownNASADataCenter/Home.htm

THE ROCK OF DOOM

65 million years ago, an asteroid, approximately six miles in diameter, hit Earth at an estimated speed of 50,000 to 100,000 miles an hour (as dramatically illustrated in this painting by artist for NASA: Don Davis). Scientists are still researching the details of what happened and the time-frame over which they happened, but geologic evidence indicates that a combination of natural effects killed off two-thirds to three-quarters of all plants and animals, including the dinosaurs; school-bus-size Triceratops was one of the last dinosaur species. Our planet vibrated like a bell being rung from impact shock waves that passed all the way around the Earth and possibly even through it, superheated debris was thrown miles above the world and then rained back down making the sky glow red hot while the air became fouled with poisonous gases and acid mist, Earthquakes shook the ground and volcanoes erupted. A tsunami hundreds of feet high and moving at hundreds of miles an hour, splashed over a huge area of North, Central, and South America. The global climate was changed drastically, with temperatures at first becoming hotter, then dropping to freezing from the ensuing day-and-night blackness of an "impact winter". Sunlight was blocked out for months, until the thick haze and dust gradually settled to the surface. A specimen in the Space Rocks study collection is iridium sediment (a metal element rare on Earth, but common in meteorites) carried in the air by the weather after this impact and deposited worldwide at the geologic K-T Boundary layer in the ground. The ancient impact site is the Chicxulub Crater, five miles deep and over 100 miles wide; mostly under sea and sediment, partially overlapping land on the northwest tip of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

THE LAST OF THE DINOSAURS

In this photograph are fossilized Triceratops fragments (Clockwise from top: tooth, rib bone, frill)dug up by paleontologists during fieldwork in Wyoming and Montana. These pieces are displayed in a Riker Mount so that students can hold specimens from one of the last dinosaur species on Earth without the jagged edges crumbling and to avoid getting stone grit in their mouths or eyes.

THE TUNGUSKA EVENT

At 7:17 A. M., June 30, 1908, above the Tunguska River in a remote area of Siberia, Russia, an aerial explosion flattened 800 square miles of forest below, leaving 80 million trees on the ground in a radial pattern pointing out from the center of the downward blast. This was followed by a firestorm while black molten metal rain fell. (The old photograph above, is from Leonid Kulik's early expeditions to the site.) There's still some debate about what happened, despite local first-hand accounts, but it's most probable that a rock from space approximately 120 feet across, weighing 200 million pounds, travelling at over 33,000 miles an hour, plunged into Earth's atmosphere. At about 28,000 feet altitude, the extreme heat (44,000 degrees Fahrenheit) of atmospheric compression caused the rock to fragment and mostly vaporize, producing a spectacular fireball in the sky. The Space Rocks collection includes one of the metal rain drops and a piece of bark from a spruce tree knocked down by the Tunguska Event.

SUBJECT-RELATED EDUCATIONAL SITES

Over 400 years ago Galileo Galilei first turned his telescope toward the night sky in 1609; both professionals and amateurs are still doing that today and some offer public viewing times.

NASA and Brown University are enhancing school science and math curricula through the Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium. Teachers interested in applying for certification by NASA to borrow Moon rocks brought back to Earth by America's Apollo astronauts, and meteorite specimens (all shipped directly to your schools), may contact the consortium for the latest information: http://www.ri.spacegrant.org

NASA DAWN mission, 2007-2015: One meteorite specimen in the Space Rocks study collection is a small piece of Vesta that was knocked off into space. Many students and teachers are following Dawn'seight-year, 3.2-billion-mile mission to the heart of the Asteroid Belt (where most meteorites originate), because asteroids contain matter that is virtually unchanged since our solar system was forming, (and partly because during preparations in 2006, we were given the opportunity to have our individual names put in the spacecraft). Dawn, carrying our names, is the first space voyager to attempt orbits around two different bodies in space: first at the brightest asteroid, Vesta, having arrived July 15 PDT, 2011 (and at the largest asteroid, Ceres, in 2015). http://www.dawn-mission.org/index.asp

OUR NAMES ON MARS: NASA's Phoenix spacecraft traveled 422 million miles through space following its launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a Delta II rocket, August 4, 2007, and reached Mars, May 25, 2008. This mission is special to me because: Phoenix touched down in the north polar region on Mars and I've been in the ice of the north polar region on Earth, a specimen in the Space Rockstour collection is a Martian meteorite, plus NASA had already recorded our names (Marguerite & Dr. Len) on board so, sort of vicariously, two retired school teachers have gotten to Mars.

STARSHINE satellites: From 1998 to 2001, I worked with students grinding and polishing metal mirrors for three Project Starshine satellites: Starshine I was deployed by STS-96 Space Shuttle Discoveryastronauts in 1999, Starshine 2 was deployed by STS-108 Space Shuttle Endeavour astronauts in 2001, and Starshine 3 was sent into a polar orbit on board an Athena I, the first launch by NASA from Kodiak Island, Alaska, in 2001.

SOME SELECTED BOOKS AND PERIODICALS

Listed first are a few introductory astronomy and meteorite books; we don't need math or physics backgrounds to read them. These are often available in your school library, public libraries, or through interlibrary loan systems. If you like to highlight and underline, as I do, you can buy them in paperback (new or used) at local and online bookstores. This will save you money and also save you from librarian angst because you won't be writing in a borrowed copy. (Always look for the very latest edition, as new scientific learning is added during revisions.)

The astronomy periodicals, listed next, contain splendid color photographs and, as with the books above, don't require a math and physics background. They are usually available in public libraries and bookstores or by subscription. You may also find them in your school's library or through interlibrary loan.

Dr. Stephen Hawking: Professor Hawking writes both technical and popular books about science and has a worldwide following. I went to meet him, before an evening lecture in 1999, as I admire his intellect. I came away from our meeting inspired by his humanity because, during that day, he'd been visiting patients in Boston Children's Hospital, as a role model for not giving up. His website at Cambridge University is:http://hawking.org.uk

Dr. Carl Sagan: The late Professor Sagan actively shared his diverse interests with the general public, as well as with his students at Cornell University. I enjoyed reading his books, watching him on television, and found such energy in his enthusiasm for education. In the middle of his 1980 Cosmos T.V. series on PBS, I wrote to him; he was kind enough to reply with a detailed letter. In the following quotation, he calls our attention, scientifically, to the fact that human beings have more in common than differences: "Every person on Earth shares 99.9 percent of the same DNA sequences." The memorial website devoted to his multifaceted work is: http://www.carlsagan.com/

Dr. Eric Chaisson: Professor Chaisson's best-selling astronomy textbook (listed above) is available in an edition for math and physics students and an edition for the general reader. To conclude a 1982 guest lecture that I attended, he took questions from the audience. I felt self-conscious, as an education major, because I worried that students majoring in science, and their faculty, might find my question rather pedestrian, so I made it as scientifically succinct as possible. Not only did he respond to my query aboutthe nature of the universe, but first he honored me by explaining my question to everyone else. His website at Harvard University is: https:www.cfa.harvard.edu/

Lately, I've been trying to follow the work of physicists Dr. Lisa Randall and Dr. Brian Cox at CERN, where the Higgs Boson has been discovered and where they seek to explain the universe in detail.

"Citizens Serving Communities." In the U.S. Civil Air Patrol you can study aerospace education, plus actively participate in search and rescue, disaster relief, homeland security, and humanitarian missions, as well as other aviation-related activities. For more information log onto the National Headquarters website at: www.gocivilairpatrol.com We are the men and women of the volunteer civilian United States Air Force Auxiliary where you serve locally, fly free, and get a new view of your home state. No matter where you are in this country, there's a wing or squadron (and you don't have to be a pilot to join).

Also, check out the Teacher Orientation Program and our Cadet Program offering youth, ages 12 to 18, a healthy lifestyle of "better things to do than drugs" and the chance to be positive role models for young children. Civil Air Patrol: "Above and Beyond."

Close-up of our Moon by the Apollo 17 astronauts after picking up lunar samples: NASA

ABOUT ME ( I want to know why I want to know.)

My best teachers over the years (some with dogged determination), taught me how to learn; I didn't always appreciate it immediately, but would eventually. I began Kindergarten as a timid student and reluctantly trudged through 13 years of public school. After serving honorably on active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard (International Ice Patrol; once right over the Titanic sinking site), I was eligible for educational funding of veterans under the G. I. Bill, but what college would ever want 'me'? Fortunately, my home state of Rhode Island had just opened a new community college where an apparently adventurous administrator actually accepted me into the world of higher education; little did she know how long I'd stay in that world.

As the first person in my family to go to college and only the second one fortunate enough to even graduate from high school (just barely), I was in an exciting new environment. However, if it weren't for a combination of scholarship and fellowship financial assistance, tuition waivers, several graduate assistantships, adaptable on-campus and off-campus employment, United States government-guaranteed loans, and that G. I. Bill which started it all, I'd have been another in our long familial line of mill workers (men and women who, after work, read books from their local public libraries).

I absolutely loved my 23 years as a full-time and part-time college student earning an A.A. at the Community College of Rhode Island (where I first started to learn how to learn), B.A., B.S., and M.A.T. degrees from Rhode Island College, plus a University of Connecticut Ph.D. in education, reinforced by some national honor societies, encouragement from my wife (a school teacher for 31 years), and our children (I hope). In addition, I served as a Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla Commander, became a Lt. Colonel in Civil Air Patrol aerospace education, and in my spare time planned tours of Civil War historic sites around the country and made Zen rock gardens.

With a doctorate in my pocket, I felt free to study any subject on my own, partly because I chose to, but more importantly because I knew how to. At last, I appreciated having been taught 'how to learn' by my best teachers along the way. In addition, one of my own graduate students pointed out (tactfully) that by then I had more letters 'after' my name than there are 'in' my name.

Everything interests me, so I considered every possibility in developing a community service postdoctoral project through which I could continue studying indefinitely and at the same time ‘give back’ by encouraging public school students to enjoy learning. I'd always found astrophysics and space exploration fascinating; going into space was science fiction when I was a kid, but during the years I'd been in school it had moved to the forefront of active science, so I launched (metaphorically, albeit enthusiastically) into study of those pieces of our solar system that I could actually get at because they fall from the sky. Through the generous assistance of two international meteorite specialists, I was able to purchase, one by one, a comprehensive collection of sixty small-size meteoritic specimens to examine and hand around to students during school and library workshops. Of course, I couldn't study meteorites very long without exploring (metaphorically again) asteroids, comets, planets, moons, dust, impacts and DINOSAURS!

At the same time as I was hitting the books (the last clichéd-metaphor; I wouldn't really hit a book because I like them so much), I earned an FCC license to produce and host my own public radio educational talk shows and classical music programs for four years (and got to change my name), worked for six years as a photographer and was a Student Teaching Supervisor, Cooperating Teacher, Visiting Lecturer and Adjunct Professor in education at a college and two universities in three states for over twenty years. However, I found teaching college to be not nearly as intellectually stimulating as being a college student.

Now, as a volunteer educator (retired teacher), I bring space rocks and dinosaur fossils to schools, libraries and other centers of lifelong learning so that we can study them together. Additionally, I share some social comments about living.

-We can all learn much more at our public library; in the United States, knowledge is free to everyone.-We are responsible for what we do, and sometimes for what we do not do.-Only a fool wants to hear just his own ideas repeated back to him.-We can't use our brains on drugs; that's why it's called dope.-Without integrity, we have no credibility.-Hate hurts, both ways.-We can do better.

CLIPPINGS (L-R): Len with the wrong dinosaur, and perched on the edge of "Meteor Crater" before falling over backwards.

Thank you for visiting my website. If you need a copy of my curriculum vitae for your school or library files, or have questions and comments that you'd like to share, please e-mail me and I'll respond promptly. I hope to see you in class or at a local library soon. Take care, Dr. Len

e-mail: Marguerite.DrLen@yahoo.com

Marguerite & Dr. Len also present My Dog Shag school and library read-aloud workshops in which elementary school students illustrate free copies of their children's book to take home. They're also the authors of Tell Me About My Schooland wrote the parents' foreword for Tell Me About My First Plane Trip as well as the parents' primer in Spelling Bee; all three published by Pockets of Learning for early childhood education.

If you'd like to print out your own free e-book copy of My Dog Shag, right from your personal computer, you can download it now by clicking: My Dog Shag PDF Oct 2011

Shown here are two bare rocks, on the ground, that students examine during a Space Rocks workshop using basic science skills (plus our physical senses) to determine which is a space rock and which is an Earth rock. These specimens can be easily compared by weighing them on a gram scale, lowering each into a graduated cylinder to measure water displacement, looking at them under a magnifying glass, holding a small magnet on a string next to them, feeling them with your hands, smelling them with your nose, and tapping them on a lab table to hear if they sound different. (It's safer that we not use our sense of taste for checking out unfamiliar substances.) Extensive ongoing research estimates that "Meteor Crater" was formed when a huge meteoritic mass, more than 130 feet wide, weighing over 100,000 tons, traveling through the air at more than 35 times the speed of sound, slammed into the hard desert and violently disintegrated. (For velocity comparison, NASA's Space Shuttles flew at Mach 25.) The meteorite was named after nearby Canyon Diablo and its impact site is called the Canyon Diablo Crater or Barringer Crater by meteoriticists, but we find it on the Internet under its popular name at: http://www.meteorcrater.com/

Hubble Space Telescope photograph of Mars: NASA

Down on the ground, my picture on the right is the view across the crater, rim-to-rim. Dr. David Roddy, USGS, guided us among the boulders ejected by the meteorite impact and taught us to eat Popsicles when we got back to indoors air conditioning, yet after hours out in the sun I looked like a French Fry and felt like a refried bean. Our field trip went well, other than the day that I lost my footing while perched at the edge of the crater and fell over backwards protecting my camera. Despite a bones-on-stones rib separation that I still remember in damp weather, I managed to laugh it all off (at least in front of witnesses) until I could get to a chiropractor. Over 150 impact craters around the world have been documented so far, but this one is the first-identified and best-preserved major impact crater on Earth; most of the others are extensively eroded from millennia of weathering. After 49,000+/-300 years, this crater remains approximately 4,100 feet wide and 570 feet deep, with a fine visitors center and museum right beside it for you to appreciate in person. Nearly three decades prior to our visit, the late Dr. Roddy had trained NASA astronauts here (most of them without stumbling or fumbling a camera) before their Apollo missions to gather geologic specimens in impact craters on the Moon.

The PDF workshop and scavenger hunt handouts listed next were written by Dr Len and are not copyrighted: students, teachers, and librarians may download and print them for educational use; please just give credit where appropriate.

If you're new to my Website, I designed it as one continuous web page using Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition, plus Yahoo SiteBuilder, so that you can easily scroll down through all the photographs and text (displayed for online reading against a subdued plain background, with margins, on desktop and laptop computer monitors). The Space Rocks project is described first, then there's a litany of links in Subject-related education websites, after all that is a brief blurb about me.

Since 1987, it's been encouraging to work with thousands of enthusiastic interested and interesting students, teachers, librarians, members of Civil Air Patrol and other organizations of life-long learning from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont as we've studied together during Space Rocks workshops. As of 2014, my presentations are mostly local (I'm in Rhode Island); sites farther away require advanced special arrangements.

Our solar system has been likened to a pinball machine because some of its objects 'bump' (often with considerable force) into each other. These 'impacts' may cause moving rocks in space to change course (similar to the equal and opposite reactions of the ricocheting ball in the machine), however unlike the game's steel ball, and depending upon the angle and force of impact, pieces of rocky planets, moons, asteroids, and meteoroids may 'bounce' off in different directions, some even eventually reaching Earth (and other solar system bodies) as meteorites. The Astronomy that falls from the sky link (above) offers a succinct introduction (either here online or as a printout to keep) so that you'll have well-thought out comments and probing questions to ask during a Space Rocks workshop. Public libraries often have available asteroid and meteorite videos to borrow as well as computers online to use in the library for Internet research (plus all those books on the shelves and through Interlibrary Loan!)

Students interested in Space Rocks workshops are requested to click the Astronomy that falls from the sky link (next) and read the introductory contents in preparation. If you'd like to join the summer 2014 meteorite scavenger hunt, scroll all the way to the bottom of this main web page for a list of PDF files.

The 18 specimens pictured and described in detail below, Triceratops fossils, Triceratops model, a chalcopyrite Earth rock, magnifying glass and lab magnet, bulletin board display pictures, study handouts, plus color printed certificates of participation are all provided at no cost to students, teachers, schools and publicly-supported free libraries open to all men and women, boys and girls.

YOU CAN HOLD METEORITES FROM THE MOON AND MARSAT FREE WORKSHOPS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES